The fight between Walmart and Amazon is no longer just about who can deliver groceries faster or offer the lowest price on household essentials.
That rivalry has moved into nearly every part of retail.
The two companies compete for shoppers, marketplace sellers, delivery speed, memberships, supply-chain strength, and even international e-commerce reach.
TheStreet covered that widening battle as Walmart has tried to use its stores as a delivery advantage and push deeper into areas where Amazon has long been strong.
Now the fight is moving further into a business that customers may not think about when they place an order or walk through a store: advertising.
This shift is pivotal because retail advertising has become one of the most important growth areas for large retailers.
When a company such as Walmart sells ads, it is not just selling space on a website. It sells access to shoppers and the ability to measure whether those shoppers later buy a product.
For Walmart, that creates a new way to make money beyond selling groceries and household essentials. For customers, it affects the ads they see online, in apps, and increasingly on streaming TV.
Walmart buys Vibe.co to expand connected TV ads
Walmart confirmed on June 23 that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Vibe.co, a self-serve connected TV advertising platform.
While the companies did not officially disclose the terms of the transaction, the Wall Street Journal reported that it includes a $1.2 billion cash payout, citing people familiar with the situation.
Vibe.co, a French technology firm, is designed to help small and mid-sized businesses and mid-market brands run connected TV ad campaigns more easily.
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“Vibe.co has created a purpose-built platform that simplifies streaming TV advertising, and together, we can help more businesses connect with customers across streaming environments while measuring the impact of those campaigns through Walmart’s commerce capabilities,” said Ryan Mayward, GM and senior vice president, Walmart Connect U.S.
In simple terms, it is the ad business around shows and videos people watch through smart TVs and streaming apps.
That market can be difficult for smaller advertisers to enter. Buying TV ads has traditionally required bigger budgets, specialized planning, and more complicated measurement.
Walmart wants to make that process easier through Walmart Connect, its commerce media business.
The company said Vibe.co’s platform will help advertisers with campaign activation, transparency, and measurement between media spending and commerce outcomes.
That last part is key.
A brand does not just want to know whether someone saw an ad. It wants to know whether the ad helped lead to a sale.
Walmart can offer advertisers something traditional TV sellers cannot always provide as directly: a connection to actual shopping behavior.
Walmart Connect becomes a bigger part of Walmart’s growth story
The acquisition comes as Walmart’s advertising business is becoming more important to its overall strategy. In its first-quarter fiscal 2027 earnings, Walmart said its global advertising business grew 37%. Walmart Connect in the U.S. grew 44%, excluding VIZIO.
That kind of growth matters because Walmart’s core retail business is massive but lower-margin.
Selling groceries keeps shoppers coming back, but grocery retail is expensive and competitive. Advertising can be a higher-margin business and gives Walmart another way to grow profit without depending only on selling more products in stores.
That is why Walmart’s 2024 acquisition of VIZIO was such an important move.
VIZIO strengthened Walmart’s position in connected TV through smart TVs and the SmartCast operating system.
Now Vibe.co gives Walmart another tool, a platform that can make connected TV ads easier for more advertisers to buy and measure. Basically, VIZIO gives Walmart the actual TV screens inside millions of living rooms, while Vibe.co provides the easy-to-use software that lets everyday sellers buy ad space on them.
Together, the moves suggest Walmart is trying to build a larger ad ecosystem around its stores, website, app, marketplace, and streaming TV reach.
That could be especially useful for Walmart marketplace sellers, since a smaller brand that sells through Walmart may not have the budget or team to run a traditional TV campaign.
But if Walmart can make connected TV advertising easier to launch and tie it back to sales, those sellers may have a new way to reach shoppers.
Amazon is the advertising giant Walmart is chasing
The Amazon comparison is unavoidable.
Amazon has already built one of the world’s biggest advertising businesses by connecting product search, marketplace sellers, streaming content, and customer purchase data.
In the first quarter of 2026, Amazon’s advertising services revenue reached $17.24 billion, up 24% from the prior year.
That gives Amazon a major lead, but Walmart has advantages of its own. It has a massive store base, a large grocery business, a growing marketplace, and a weekly relationship with millions of shoppers who buy food, household goods, apparel, electronics, and pharmacy items.
That shopping behavior is valuable to advertisers because it gives them a clearer view of what customers actually buy.
Walmart’s challenge is turning that data into a bigger advertising business without making the shopping experience feel too crowded or promotional.
If Walmart can use advertising growth to support better prices, better digital tools, and a larger marketplace, the business could strengthen its consumer pitch.
But if shoppers feel like every screen has become another ad aisle, which, to be honest, can be annoying as a shopper simply trying to add items to the cart, Walmart will have to be careful.
Walmart’s Amazon rivalry moves into the living room
The Vibe.co deal shows how broad the Walmart-Amazon rivalry has become.
First, the fight was about online shopping. Then it expanded to delivery speed, groceries, and diversified revenue beyond retail. Now it is moving deeper into streaming TV and advertising.
Large retailers no longer just sell products, but they also sell access to shoppers.
Amazon proved how powerful that model can be. Walmart is now trying to show that its own combination of stores, shopping data, marketplace sellers, and connected TV assets can make it a stronger rival in the ad market.
For shoppers, the move may show up gradually.
They may see more targeted ads tied to products they already buy, more brands trying to reach them through streaming TV, and more small sellers using Walmart’s ad tools to compete for attention.
For Walmart, the company wants to turn its retail reach into an advertising engine that can help it compete with Amazon beyond the checkout lane.
Related: Amazon’s $8.3 billion Prime Day sends Wall Street a warning